What is information? Or what does information make us capable of doing? Information put into context is knowledge. Information exchange is the basis for empiric evolvment and great inventions. Without relatively free flow of information society can not evolve and prosper. Historically things would have turned out pretty differently of the alphabet was patented, or mathematics was protected as intellectual property.
During listening to a podcast interview with Robert Laughlin, that (I thought was only) about carbon future and climate, the talk also mentioned the topic of patents and intellectual property rights (at 50:35). Protection of informaton has restricted US to some extent to empirically evolve, and jobs is outsourced to e.g. Japan and now China. The patents is kept by American companies, but production is not in the US. It is however unclear how this affects employment and innovation in the long run, but there is a high probability that a connection is present. It started my thinking on how such protective measures affects our society. Laughlin mentions a book he has authored: Crime of Reason that rationalizes over this subject.
Just think how some cities and whole nations became recognized mariners in the era of sailships. By sharing knowledge, and demolishing the churchs false demagogy saying the world was flat, they conquered the earth. Little or no knowledge was patented before industrialization. At least not commodity knowledge.
The invention of the internet has let loose massive flows of information. Our society and daily lives is packed with technology. Information technology is ubiquitous and indespensable in the parts of the world calling themselves information societies. What disturbs me is that the tools we are so dependant on is illegal to tinker with to an increasing degree. Apple is the forefront of this development, but they are not alone. Given that a lot of smart people, buying products, sees ways to improve them it is a waste of talent not to let them. The knowledge of how the tools that we depend upon works should be available. Reverse engineering should not be am act of crime. The products themselves is just as valuable with the knowledge available, if not even more. When products can be extended in ways the manufacturer did not think of, the usefulness and usablility increases.
This is especially true for software, that increasingly becomes the inner workings of our tools. Did you know that the average car has software with over 10 million lines of code? How many knows how that code works, opposed to traditional home mechanic doing maintenance works on his own car? Recently it has been shown that wireless pressure sensors are vulnerable for malicous hacker attacks. Patents can not protect you from criminals, but people with good intentions (and I am fairly convinced they outnumber criminals) could reveals such things. The most capable could even provided fixes. Software should not be patented. The value is in goods that can be traded and valueadding services using the knowledge. Using information correctly is complex (instantiation of knowledge) and will always be in demand.
My point with arguing that knowledge about how our tools works is that this is how it has been most of the time during our civilization, and probably before that too. When there are too many patents and intellectual properties protected from reuse and tinkering, the information society may be deadlocked. If this is true, it is a slow process. It is like the story of boiled frogs, that do not recognize that their beein boiled when let into cold water slowly heating up.
The issues of protecting knowledge may eventually restrict desired and needed innovation. In the context of the interview with Laughlin, one can derive that it slows down or prohibit much needed concensus over what environmental challenges we are really facing and how they can be solved. To make it clear where I am going with this: Environmental challenges are global, the internet is made for global information exchange. The tools we use, that largely is the cause of (our perceived) environmental challenges, are protected from tinkering. Information protection and patents is not helping us in figuring what we have to do.
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